Eq: Value (90)
(New York)
Nike is one of the retail stocks that has had a very good year, and it may be about to get even better. Goldman Sachs has just jumped on the Nike bandwagon, saying that the stock is going to keep on rising. GS upgraded Nike to a Buy from Neutral and joined 25 other analysts who say the stock is a Buy. According the GS, their change in view is due to “Evidence of building pricing power, signs of operating leverage, accelerating shift to differentiated retail, sharply scaling app ecosystem, and a constructive global athletic growth backdrop”.
FINSUM: Brands are in a better position than retailers, and Nike is on the very good side of that better group.
(New York)
Retail is a hard sector to invest in right now. Generally speaking it seems better to buy into broad retailers like Walmart or Target than into clothing specialists like Gap, and discount retailers seem better than traditional, but the whole industry is a battlefield. With that in mind, here is a good stock to look at: Tanger Outlets (SKT). The REIT owns 39 discount malls across the US and has a cheap valuation that seems to have suffered simply from being in the sector. The company is not financially distressed and sports a 96% occupancy rate at its malls. It is trading at about half the valuation of some other popular REITs and sports a hefty 9%+ yield. Because it is in the outlet mall space, it faces considerably less turmoil than traditional malls.
FINSUM: You probably saw a Tanger last time you were on the interstate. The fundamentals of this stock make it look like a good investment.
(New York)
This time of year it would be easy for investors to start feeling rosier about retail stocks. After all, holiday sales are the best time of year for the stocks and it would be dangerously easy to think these shares might have turned the corner because of better holiday sales. However, the key to choosing these names is to understand “bifurcation”, according to Cowen research. That bifurcation is that broadline retailers like Target and Walmart are doing well, while apparel-driven retailers like Kohl’s, Gap, and Macy’s are not. For example, Target and Walmart are up 88% and 27% respectively this year while Macy’s and Gap are down 49% and 33% respectively.
FINSUM: Momentum seems like a friend in the the retail space. We expect this bifurcation to keep going, especially as consumer purse strings are likely to be tighter this holiday season.
(New York)
Value stocks have been in the doldrums forever. Growth stocks have been outcompeting for many years. One way to get some good performance is to stay away from value stocks as a whole, and instead focus on individual names. Here are some stocks that look cheap and have positive catalysts in the cards (from Bernstein Research): Hewlett Packard, Apple, Tyson Foods, UnitedHealth Group, Cigna, Anthem, Nielsen Holdings, Delta Airlines, and United Airlines.
FINSUM: Apple as a value stock seems rather questionable but we get the “mispriced because of how great its earnings are” logic. The airlines seem an interesting bet to us.
(Detroit)
The car industry has not been doing so well over the last few years. After seeing a big surge in sold vehicles leading up to 2015, sales have fallen off and the industry has been in a slump. If demographics are any sign, things aren’t going to get much better any time soon. New data shows that the average car buyer is getting older, and worse, cars are staying on the road longer, hurting companies’ all important replacement cycle. In terms of the total number of cars sold in October, the US is back in the same territory as it was in 2002.
FINSUM: There is no point denying it—a lot of car prices have risen dramatically over the last two decades (versus salaries), so it is no wonder average buyers are getting older and cars are being held longer. More than half of buyers are now over age 55!
(New York)
Many media outlets love to publish stories about bargain stocks (us included). However, there is a group of shares being pushed as a “great value” that are definitely not such, at least according to UBS. The bank says that the wide group of retail shares that have been mauled lately, including Macy’s, JC Penney, Kohl’s, TJ Maxx, and Ross are not a good value. These stocks have been hurt badly because of weak earnings and the general decline in brick and mortar, which falsely lead some to think they are a “buy”. “We think ongoing e-commerce disruption, plus tariffs, could cause not only these, but also many other public and private retailers to close stores in 2020 and beyond” says UBS, clearly showing that they don’t think the industry is out of the woods yet.
FINSUM: Retail has some juicy yields, but you really have to understand each stocks’ specific characteristics to know which ones to choose. This is an expert’s game. The cheat sheet is to lean towards discount retailers.
Buy These Stocks Regardless of Who Wins the Election
Written by FINSUM
(Washington)
There is a currently a great deal of anxiety over the election. It is not just political either—a Democrat or Republican win would create drastically different economic environments, which will lead to very different returns. One prominent hedge fund manager commented on the whole situation, saying “I think we all wish that we could kind of go back to thinking about investing without political risks”. Despite this longing, it is clear that we will not go back to that era anytime soon. Accordingly, check out these stocks, which should thrive no matter if Trump or a far-left Democrat wins the bid. Healthcare and tech look like big risks, but interestingly, large oil companies may be a good bet. If Warren wins and bans fracking, oil prices are likely to rise, helping large integrated oil companies. Another approach is to focus on stocks that will benefit from government plans that are already happening, such as those related to state infrastructure spending, legalized sports gambling, and shipping fuel standards.
FINSUM: We are still a year out from the election, but it is certainly worth thinking about how to position the portfolio, as polls leading up to the big day will move markets a lot.
(Detroit)
The car industry is the epicenter of the current economic slowdown. The car business is both the culprit and a victim of the biggest economic downturn since the Crisis. It is not just in Germany, but also in Asia and Detroit. The industry uses so many raw materials and supplies from many adjacent industries, that the contraction in the auto sector is is dragging the whole global economy down with it. The chief executive of VW says “This trade war is really influencing the mood of the customers, and it has the chance to really disrupt the world economy … Because of the trade war, the car market [in China] is basically in a recession . . . That’s scary for us”.
FINSUM: What is curious about the car downturn is that consumers are very strong. Therefore, from our view, the weakness in the auto sector is more concerning because it could be a leading indicator.
(New York)
There is a lot of investor anxiety about a recession right now. The big economic expansion of the last decade does have the feel of an ending coming, but even if that is true, how should one react? According to Barron’s the answer is to employ a long-term buy and hold strategy. That said, many don’t have the stomach or cash for such a strategy. A better way to think about allocation is to consider the type of recession we might have: will it be driven by a real economic downturn, a policy error, or a crisis—each have highly different return profiles? In this instance, a recession seems more likely to come from a real economic slowdown, which is good news for investors. Such recessions generally have significantly lesser falls in stock prices than the other varieties.
FINSUM: The reality is that we are likely having a “soft landing” type of recession where the economy slows gradually. That means we might not have a bear market at all.
(New York)
Investors have been playing defense in stocks for months. Everyone has been very spooked by economic data and the trade war, which has caused a rotation into defensive sectors. However, a top manager at Fidelity, Denise Chisholm, is saying the opposite: it is time to play offense. Her core argument is that real interest rates in the US are negative--which happened after the Crisis and also in the 1970s and 1980s—which is highly bullish for the stock market. Further, the ECB and Fed are cutting at the same time, a quite rare occurrence, and one that has always led to an equity market rally.
FINSUM: This is an interesting contrarian argument. We particularly like the ECB + Fed narrative.
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The Best Strategy to Handle All This Volatility
Written by FINSUM
(New York)
The market has been very up and down lately. 50 bp losses or gains in a day feel pretty standard by now. But all of that may be wreaking havoc on investors’ nerves and portfolios. So what is the best way to hedge against the volatility? Most low volatility funds invest in stocks with a low beta, or those that change little compared to market movements. However, there may be an even better way to go about hedging. AGF has an ETF call BTAL, which not only buys low beta names, but also shorts high beta ones, all in equal weight with equal sector balance. In bouts of volatility, those shorts tend to really help gains in a way that holding long-only positions does not.
FINSUM: This seems like a smart approach that gives a sophisticated level of protection to investors. Worth a look.
(New York)
For some reason, there is a great deal of glee about the return of value stocks this month. Even though we are only on the 17th day of September, seemingly ever research department on Wall Street is ready to proclaim that value stocks are back. BAML fits the bill perfectly, saying that value stocks are like a tightly wound spring that is finally uncoiling. In their defense, value stocks have outperformed growth stocks by 9 percentage points this month, the biggest divergence since 2010. Morgan Stanley also notes that there is currently “a massive rotation away from growth-style factors toward value-style”.
FINSUM: It has been a great start to the autumn for value stocks, but they have been in a funk so long that it is hard to believe they have suddenly shed their shackles.
(New York)
It has been for around a decade that value stocks have been getting hammered by growth stocks. The rut has been so bad that many have given up on the discipline altogether. But recently, something has been changing. Momentum stocks, long the darling of this bull market, have started to lag their value-oriented peers. This change started last week and is continuing today, and follows the worst month for value stocks in at least 20 years (this past August).
FINSUM: This is an encouraging sign, but certainly is not enough to say “value stocks are back!”.
(New York)
How to defend against this tough equity market? Some say to buy defensive sectors like healthcare and consumer staples. Others buy gold. Ironically, however, the best protection may be to stick with the old 60/40 balanced portfolio. Despite all the market turmoil recently, if you had been holding a 60% SPY and 40% AGG portfolio over the last month you would have had a net return of negative 0.62%, which is pretty good considering how ugly markets were. If you had been holding it for the whole year, you would have a sterling return of 14.45%.
FINSUM: These stats are a testament to old fashioned diversification!